Posted on 08/09/2002 8:59:43 AM PDT by NYer
WASHINGTON (AP) _ Ten Americans and six foreigners were charged Friday with taking sexually explicit photographs of their own children or children in their care and sending them over the Internet to an international child pornography ring, the U.S. Customs Service said.
Forty-five children, including 37 in the United States, were victims and have been removed from the care of those indicted, Customs officials said. Most of them are in the custody of another parent or relative.
The defendants include nine people from seven states who were indicted in Fresno, Calif., along with six residents of Denmark, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The indictment alleges that members of the ring, referring to themselves as ``the club,'' traded messages across the Internet requesting photographs of specific sexual poses. One man asked for an audiotape so he could hear a child crying while being spanked, the indictment said, and another posed naked with an underage girl.
The Customs Service coordinated the U.S. investigation that began last November with a request for help from the Danish National Police, who were acting on a tip about an international child pornography ring. ``I congratulate the investigators whose ingenuity and perseverance brought these people to justice,'' Customs Commissioner Robert C. Bonner said in a statement.
The Americans charged include: Lloyd Alan Emmerson of Fresno County, Calif.; Paul Whitmore and Brooke Rowland, San Diego County, Calif.; Tracy Reynolds, Texas; Leslie Peter Bowcut, Idaho; Michael David Harland, Florida; Harry Eldon Tschernetzki, Washington state; John Zill, South Carolina; Craig Davidson, Kansas. The identity of the tenth American was not immediately available.
The foreigners were identified as Eggert Jensen and Bente Jensen of Denmark; Jean-Michael Frances Cattin, Marcel Egli and Peter Althaus of Switzerland; and Dirk-Jan Prins of the Netherlands.
On the Net: Customs Service: http://www.customs.ustreas.gov
AP-ES-08-09-02 1114EDT
Possible, but we definately know Westerfield had child porn.
My wife worked at a plant and they hired some retarded people. One of the retarded women was found in a bathroom stall giving oral sex for 25 cents a head. The "patrons" claimed they had her consent. That is different from buying french fries.
The perfect explaination of why it is wrong.
When a child is involved with sex with a parent - it forever changes their views of what sex is. The same is true of adult/child sex - it forever changes the meaning of sex from a heterosexual experience for marriage and raising a family to the search for more young people that they can abuse for their pleasure.
Any people seeking deviancy will find it. In addition, they will bring about the ruin of society as has been displayed in other civilizations that became involved in deviancy, orgies, etc.
Because this is the next step in the "sexual revolution", I fear. And if we continue along with the old line of "It's wrong, just because it is." then we will be easily trounced by the liberals in this matter.
That is funny. I have seen many papers and books all my life stating that it is wrong, a sin, deviant, child abuse, and dangerous to a child. In addition, sex with a parent or relative has been painted as incest. Sex with strangers has been painted as rape of a child.
Do you mean that we only listen to the latest information as a few try to publish their sick obsessions to win approval of society? What is wrong with these people that would go to so much trouble to abuse a child? Are they unable to perform heterosexual sex?
Or, are we to only listen to the proponents of sexual deviancy as they try to promote their views and summarily then discard all opposing ideas?
100 Arrests Break a Child Pornography Ring
FBI Busts Pornography Ring: Priests, Law Enforcement Officers Among 89 Arrested in Sweep.
Paedophile squad saves girl, 6, from rapist father
PREDATORS WANT EVEN MORE "RIGHTS": Suspected High-Tech Pedophiles Arrested in Seven Countries FBI cracks Web child-porn, pedophile ring
Well, now we're down to brass tacks, aren't we?
The idea of "valid reasons" is meaningless unless you have some basis for making a decision one way or the other.
The ability to make a decision implies some standard, which is either arbitrary, or it is not. And unless you've got something at bottom that says "this is always wrong," then all standards are arbitrary.
Let's address a single example to illustrate the point.
Probably the most obvious "valid reason" to condemn pedophilia is "because it could harm the child." Such concerns are meaningless, of course, unless you had some standard that says harming children is wrong.
If "no harm to children" is an arbitrary standard, then we can as easily reject the standard as the sex -- and the existence of people such as are mentioned in these articles shows that there are some who do indeed place the sex above "no harm."
And even if the standard of "no harm" is binding, there's still not necessarily a problem with pedophilia in general: adult-child sex might be allowable on a case-by-case basis, just so long as the child was not harmed; and then the debate is either over, or it has to procede on other grounds, with other "binding standards."
The very idea of a "binding standard" merely shifts the debate to whether or not any particular proposed standard is arbitrary.
Ultimately, this debate comes down to a single point: one must either accept that "it (whatever it may be) is wrong because it's wrong," or one has to conclude that all standards are arbitrary.
This takes us back to the question I asked before: is there any act which is intrinsically wrong?
Adultery is a sin. If you ignore this fact and get into adultery you will find that you are hurting your partner and breaking the intimacy and security that marriage provides, you possibly ruin your family, get a divorce and your children will be raised by one parent and then possibly a stepparent who does not love them as their own parent would. These children then grow up without the influence of their father, make mistakes in their lives based on their family situation and the damage goes on and on.
The same is true of other areas if people just follow the results of the behavior that has been condemned.
So, even though they can justify a behavior, they cannot justify away the damage that might be caused by that behavior - some of which is not apparent but may show up much later.
I wonder. Do they have "FAKE CHILDREN" to do their dirty deeds with, or do they use "REAL CHILDREN"
Ya! sure, Supreme Court. Fake cyber child porn doesn't hurt a child.
Yes. When you seek to remove all judgements, you seek the lowest level of society. Seeking the lowest level of society, leads to a low level society which eventually leads to destruction.
Look at the corporate scandals, the destruction caused by Clinton, the moral depravity creeping into our society.
Any person using your idea will judge from what is good for himself with no regard to others. He also will lose the right to expect others to treat him fairly because they too will judge all from their wants.
How does he raise a family, care for a wife? What about his business ethics, his reputation in life, the sense of respect he has in himself and the respect from others? All these areas will be undercut by the total disregard for anything other than what he wants.
Sort of like a 3-year old trying to be a man, a father, a husband, a CEO, a policeman, a fireman.
The problem is that our society has turned sex into a recreational activity, to be shared with whoever. It is no longer a sacred act between a husband and wife. So if our society continues to treat sex as a simply recreational activity then it is only a matter of time that people start to say, "Why must we deprive children of this fun?", which they are saying. And, if you take the religious aspects out of it then you could actually have an argument that it doesn't harm kids. As you said, it changes their view on sex, well if sex is just a recreational activity, same as riding bikes, then they will just hold that same view their whole life. And according to liberals, there is nothing wrong with that.
Two reasons:
I am amazed at how much headway the issue has made in certain circles and how quiet people are on the subject in response. Practices that we find offensive today are on their way to becoming social norms.
I find it better to drag the filth out in the light than sit by and hope people are notcing.
It's worked before. There was a time when it was a "given" in American culture that homosexuality was a deviant and abhorrent practice. Now they're teaching my children about it in public school.
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